The efficient exchange of personal information found in various electronic media into and out of personal information management (hereinafter referred to as “PIM”) applications in computer systems including cellular (mobile) phones, personal digital assistants (“PDA”) and portable “laptops” has been a challenge. Personal information including directory information, such as phone numbers, e-mail addresses etc can be found in text form in various electronic media.
The functionality of the exchange by using a computer system or other type of electronic system or device is furthermore dramatically enhanced by coupling stand alone devices (including mobile phones) together to form a networking environment. Within such a networking environment, users may readily exchange files, share information stored on a common database etc. and communicate and establish connections via electronic mail (e-mail), voice over internet, voice over phone, via video teleconferencing etc.
Automatic transfer of directory and calendar information is found in various electronic media such as e-mail, SMS. A widely used format is the so-called vcard format which is structured according to the vCard MIME Directory profile type.
Personal Data Interchange (PDI) occurs every time two or more individuals communicate, in either a business or personal context, face-to-face, or across space and time. Such interchanges frequently include the exchange of informal information, such as business cards, telephone numbers, addresses, dates and times of appointments, etc. Augmenting PDI with electronics and telecommunications can help ensure that information is quickly and reliably communicated, stored, organized and easily located when needed.
Personal information, by nature, is complex and diverse. Currently, proprietary standards exist to structure some types of PDI information, but no single, open specification comprehensively addresses the needs of collecting and communicating PDI information across many common communication channels such as telephones, voice-mail, e-mail, and face-to-face meetings.
The hitherto established vcard MIME Directory Profile Type contains directory information, typically pertaining to a single directory entry. The information is described using an attribute schema that is tailored for capturing personal contact information. The vCard can include attributes that describe identification, delivery addressing, telecommunications addressing, geographical, organizational, general explanatory and security and access information about the particular object associated with the vCard.
These types are used in the vCard profile to capture information associated with the identification and naming of the person or resource associated with the vCard.
The Type name “TEL” specifies the telephone number for telephony communication with the object the vCard represents usually with a Type encoding of 8 bits. The Type value is a single phone-number value which is according to the IETF standard specified in a canonical form in order to specify an unambiguous representation of the globally unique telephone endpoint. This type is based on the X.500 Telephone Number attribute. Further specifications in canonical form include but are not restricted to the type parameter “TYPE” to specify intended use for the telephone number. The TYPE parameter values can further include parameters like “home” to indicate a telephone number associated with a residence, “msg” to indicate the telephone number has voice messaging support, “work” to indicate a telephone number associated with a place of work, “pref” to indicate a preferred-use telephone number, “voice” to indicate a voice telephone number, “fax” to indicate a facsimile telephone number, “cell” to indicate a cellular telephone number, “video” to indicate a video conferencing telephone number, “pager” to indicate a paging device telephone number, “bbs” to indicate bulletin board system telephone number, “modem” to indicate a MODEM connected telephone number, “car” to indicate a carphone telephone number, “isdn” to indicate an ISDN service telephone number, “pcs” to indicate a personal communication services telephone number etc. The default type is usually “voice”. These type parameter values can be specified as a parameter list (i.e., “TYPE=work;TYPE=voice”) or as a value list (i.e., “TYPE=work,voice”). The default can be overridden to another set of values by specifying one or more alternate values. A type example may be                TEL;TYPE=work,voice,pref,msg:+33-123-444-1234        
A vCard contains further types concerned with information associated with geographical positions or regions associated with the object the vCard represents.
However, the current canonical representation of telephone numbers causes unnecessary costly problems, when for example a mobile phone tries to establish a connection with a person having given its telephone number via vCard. Depending on the location of the mobile phone, or portable computer etc, the system will always dial the canonically represented number even when the target person may be reached within a local area network, like a company network, a private network etc without dialling the entire canonically represented number.